Thanks to everyone involved in this, especially to Ben for coming up with the project and Rob, for telling me about it :)

What's on Koshdukai's folder ?

As some of you may know, one of the projects I was involved in had to do with the expansion of Reason 6 Factory Sound Bank (FSB6) which naturally left me with a bunch of spare patches and ideas I couldn't finish completely within the required time frame of that project. So, I had a few patch drafts already started that I could finish and add to this ReFill. Patches that fit this group are:

I also had some sample based experiments I was doing at the time with voice, waveshapes, sequences and patterns while using the Teenage Engineering OP-1 (during the Remote Codec+Map project, included in Reason 6.0.2 update), Arturia Oberheim SEM V (from my own patch bank, while beta testing it), Arturia Spark and Novation X-Station, so I included some of them as an example of things one can do with the NN19 and NN-XT to fatten the sound of a single sample or what can be done with wave cycles or short sized samples or REX loop segments (slices) as sample sources. So these include:

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

That was basically my first 3 seconds of reaction as soon as I bumped into that announcement today.

Being a Record Reason Duo user always made me look at Reason 6 upgrade with less enthusiasm than Record 1.0 or 1.5 only users or Reason 1 through Reason 5 only users, because most of the giant upgrading jump was going to happen to them and not to R+R users.

Ok, so... there's The Echo, Alligator and Pulveriser which it may be just a nice or a huge upgrade, depending on how much you're an effect devices geek and how much you depend on effects in your music style.

On top of that, there's the monster expansion done to Reason's Factory Sound Bank, which is also a huge upgrade to those that rely or know how to take advantage of the preset patches either as-is or as starting points to customize, tweak and make them their own patches. The FSB is also a natural ground to learn some sound design and CV based tricks, btw ;)

hmmm... and then there's also the new (and much needed) audio pitch transpose feature to be used in the audio clips, besides the well known existing time stretching feature.

and... the 64bit availability, which is a must now with the common use of 64bit OS. Being able to take advantage of my 8Gb RAM (well, most of it... at least more than 3Gb) is always a good thing.

This new and time limited offer made me rethink a bit how I felt about the upgrade from Record 1.5 + Reason 5 to Reason 6.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

With it, we'll be able to finally go beyond the 3Gb RAM limit of 32bit apps by running the 64bit version of it!

What will happen to those that were able to install the 32bit Midi Yoke + MIDI-OX version on Windows 7 64bit OS ?

Well, those relying on such solution will get an unpleasant (though expected) surprise: the ports made available by the 32bit MIDI virtualization (aka loopback) driver won't be visible to the 64bit version of Reason.

Solution? Install a proper 64bit version of such MIDI virtualization driver... problem is, there's no 64bit version of Midi Yoke :P

So... maybe now's the perfect time to change this, so when Reason 6 comes into your 64bit Windows, you can start using it right away, because this issue is already correctly dealt with :)

I've been following the work of Tobias Erichson, namely because of the MIDI over LAN solution he made. Recently (ok, July of this year... and thanks to Sterievo for warning me about it) he made available a tool based on something he was already using on the other available products.

loopMIDI is the perfect 64bit substitute for Midi Yoke, IMHO. It's dynamic in creation/destruction of virtual ports, so you can create a new needed one on-the-fly, unlike Yoke, and also unlike Yoke, it let's you do custom naming of the port being added, something very useful when you deal with a lot of'em (like I do).

I still use MIDI-OX as my virtual cabling management and MIDI filtering solution but now over loopMIDI created ports instead of Yoke.

After installing loopMIDI you can start creating the ports you'll need through its configuration option:

Here are all the ones I need in my current setup:
Then, as I said, I still need MIDI-OX to connect these with the real ports or between them:

So, for instance, I have my iPad receiving MIDI from my Axiom OUT port. I can either send MIDI to "Axiom OUT" but it's quicker to send to "OUT to iPad" if I'm not sure to what port I have it connected. Same thing with QuickShot and Trust controllers. Both are not USB controllers so they need a MIDI In to be used on one of the other USB MIDI interfaces (controllers in this case).

Sometimes I change my setup and and the physical connections, so currently I have QuickShot MIDI Out connected to Spark's MIDI In. Spark's real input is cloned into 2 virtual MIDI ports: "Spark IN" and "IN from QuickShot" so I use whatever I need at the moment.
Using "IN from QuickShot" will always make sure that I'll have the correct controller I want, as long I as update the virtual map configuration whenever I change the setup, which I normally do.

This setup isn't using the multiple Axiom sections I used to have, like a Axiom Pads, Axiom Faders etc... all done with port cloning and MIDI-OX filtering, as referenced on some of my older posts.

Ok, enough g33kyness. If you have any questions about using loopMIDI + MIDI-OX on Windows 7 64bit, post a comment and I'll try to to help if it's within my reach :)

UPDATE: I've noticed that there's some issues with SysEx when using loopMIDI so I checked Tobias site and sure enough, he already knew about some SysEx related bug. Let's hope he can find the time to release the fixed version so we can start using it and donate to help further development :)

UPDATE2: As of Feb 6th, 2012, there's a new version (1.0.2.11) available for download at Tobias Erichsen's site. I'm just downloading it and installing it (after removing the previous 1.0.1.7) and see if the SysEx issue is fixed. Hopefully, the 15~16 port limit was also lifted (?)!!! :)

UPDATE2a: Still limited to 16 ports but the scroll bug that made it hard to access the 16th port is fixed.

UPDATE3: As of Aug 25th, 2012, the new version breaks the 16 port limit!!! :D ...and also implements multi-client, allowing up to 8 client applications connected to the same port, which can be handy :)

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Sometimes, you're working with a stereo audio track and you may need some quick access to one of the L/R channels of an audio track or clip...

...turning it into a true mono source, even showing up in Record's Main Mixer as a mono track.

The slower (and destructive) way is to bounce it to disk, turn it into mono with a wave editor, save and re-import the now mono track or clip back into an audio track.

There's plenty of ways to do this without any of that trouble, so I'll show one of the simplest, cleanest and quickest way I usually use to quickly choose one of the channels within the Audio Track Device without the need for any extra Track Devices.

Simply open the device and at the back and in the Insert FX section, connect the channel you want into the Left channel of the "From Device" inputs and that's it.

The audio clip's still a stereo one, but the audio signal path up to the Main Mixer is now a true mono track.

To get both Left and Right channels as a mono source, you should use the Stereo Width knob, turning it down to 0 (zero) on the Main Mixer or you can play with this same concept and make it show up as a Mono track through a Spider L+R sum...

...or a mixer

If you need that segment of the right (or left) channel to further work with or turn it into a playable sample, you can simply sample it internally, connecting the left output of the device's Direct Out into the Sampling Input on the Audio I/O section's back, at the top of the rack.

Speaking of sampling, this is also one way of doing mono sampling, you simply disconnect the Right channel of the Sampling Input to achieve mono sampling from whichever source you need.